The controversy has renewed questions about whether the world’s largest social media platform does enough to protect the sensitive information it collects from users on its platform.
On Monday, Facebook will begin informing those users who were impacted by the data grab, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify to lawmakers on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“For the first decade, we really focused on all the good that connecting people brings,” a contrite Zuckerberg said in a rare media call last week. “But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough. We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse and thinking through how people could use these tools to do harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, hate speech. … We didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake. It was my mistake. But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough.”
Facebook shares are down 19% from an early February high.